The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure. Accordingly, such statements are not intended to constitute an admission of prior art.
Vehicle systems include a plurality of subsystems, including by way of example, engine, transmission, ride/handling, braking, HVAC, and occupant protection. Multiple controllers may be employed to monitor and control operation of the subsystems. The controllers can be configured to communicate via a controller area network (CAN) to coordinate operation of the vehicle in response to operator commands, vehicle operating states, and external conditions. A fault can occur in one of the controllers that affects communications via a CAN bus.
Topology of a network such as a CAN refers to an arrangement of elements. Known CAN systems employ a bus topology for the communication connection among all the controllers that can include a linear topology, a star topology, or a combination of star and linear topologies. Known high-speed CAN systems employ linear topologies, whereas known low-speed CAN systems employ a combination of the star and linear topologies. Known CAN systems employ separate power and ground topologies for the power and ground lines to all the controllers. Known controllers communicate with each other through messages that are sent at different periods on the CAN bus. A physical topology describes arrangement or layout of physical elements including links and nodes. A logical topology describes flow of data messages or power within a network between nodes employing links.
Known systems detect faults at a message-receiving controller, with fault detection accomplished for the message using signal supervision and signal time-out monitoring at an interaction layer of the controller. Faults can be reported as a loss of communications. Such detection systems generally are unable to identify a root cause of a fault, and are unable to distinguish between transient and intermittent faults. One known detection system requires separate monitoring hardware and dimensional details of physical topology of a network to effectively monitor and detect faults in the network.